The 4 stages of life and their existential crises

More than a linear succession of events, our life is made of discontinuities, sudden changes that imply acceptance and mourning, but also new challenges and opportunities. The key to overcoming these moments of crisis is to return to the center of our being and recover our hidden abilities.

Human existence, although it follows a thread of continuity, is discontinuous, with successive stages and moments in which we face new challenges. From birth to the end of life there are a succession of constant changes: We are always in the process of being something new, different, of transcending ourselves.

The central tendency of the human being is the search for a meaning for his existence. The formation of the person is possible to the extent that he overcomes the typical crises that arise throughout the different phases of life and give meaning to his life path.

Existential crises in the phases of life

The original meaning of the word crisis is “judgment” (as a final decision on a process) and, in general, termination of an event.

The crisis resolves, then, a situation in some stage of life, but, at the same time, defines entry into a new situation that poses its own problems. In the most usual meaning, and as we are used to understanding it, crisis is that new situation and all that it brings with it.

A priori we cannot value a crisis as something positive or negative, since it offers equal possibilities of good or bad resolution. However, in general, a person’s biographical crises are usually clearly beneficial.

One of the characteristics common to all crises is their sudden and, generally, accelerated nature. Crises never arise gradually and always seem to be the opposite of all permanence and stability.

The biographical or personal crisis defines a situation that precipitates us to an accelerated phase of existencefull of dangers and threats, but also of possibilities for personal renewal.

dangers and opportunities

In all crises of life, danger and opportunity present themselves at the same time.. The person does not live prisoner of a personality forged forever during childhood or adolescence, but changes over time, so the possibilities of success in a crisis are almost unlimited.

Another of the characteristics of the crisis is that, usually, as soon as it appears, the human being seeks a solution to get out of it. It can therefore be said that the crisis and the attempt to resolve it occur simultaneously.

Within the common characters in people there are multiple differences when facing crises. Some crises are more normal than others: they are the typical ones for which there are “prefabricated” solutions.

Others are unique and to get out of them they require a true effort of invention and creation.

Some crises are fleetings, others are more permanent; we know when they start but almost never when they end. The solution to the crisis can also be of very different types, being provisional on some occasions and definitive on others.

Traditionally, from the psychopathology of reaction and trauma, differentiated between life events (we all go through them) and traumatic (seizure triggers).

Recently there has been talk of “critical events” (divorce, loss of employment…), events that fall within the common human experience but that, in some cases, can precipitate a crisis and that, in any case, will require a great effort of adaptation on the part of the affected person .

What do biographical crises teach us?

Perhaps the most interesting thing about existential crises is that force the person to connect with their own chronological historyto stop and take stock (take perspective, review your priority table, redefine your desires…) of your vital trajectory, at each stage of life.

In a capitalist world where, as poorly interconnected and egoic individuals, we spread out in search of immediate satisfaction (anchored in the drive for the “now”, without past or future), we watch helplessly as our temporal field becomes impoverished tremendously.

Lack of time has become something of a cultural disease (an African saying states that all whites have a watch, but they never have time), an essential deficiency that renders us completely incapable of learning from the past and projecting ourselves into the future.

It deals with the phenomenon, repeatedly analyzed, of the space-time contraction of modern societies.

We wander more and more through non-places

spaces without identity or history (supermarkets, airports, shopping centers, supermarkets…), displaying a solitary, provisional and ephemeral personality.

It is what the philosopher Zygmunt Bauman well defines as “liquid modernity”, which designates the fluid and volatile state of today’s society, without very solid values, in which uncertainty due to the dizzying speed of changes has weakened human ties and where ties are fragile and expire too soon to help us understand the meaning of our days.

Biographical crises put us at the center of our being and force us to review ourselves as human beings.. By virtue of these, a kind of abyss opens between a past –which is no longer considered valid or influential in the present life– and a future that is not yet constituted.

Crises force us to look at ourselvesto live in our time, to narrate our personal history.

Ways to deal with them

Experts show that the ways of facing such critical periods shape the character and forge the existence of people. The key to a healthy adaptation is to find our own capacities to get out of the difficulties we are in.

Despite the anxieties that inevitably overwhelm each person, we all have the ability to overcome a crisis and to know how to actively seek and find a solution. To show ourselves eager to know more. To know how to rest when our effectiveness falls due to fatigue, and to reorder ourselves to return to the fight as soon as we have recovered our lost strength.

Within us is the ability to know how to accept, and even to get help, considering this not as a sign of weakness on our part, but rather of maturity.

The passage from one stage to another is always impregnated with a certain psychological tension that is a symptom of evolution, growth, maturation.

From a psychological point of view, it would be appropriate to go from one stage to another consciously and gradually, finding in each of them its own meaning as well as new values ​​and objectives.

According to the philosopher José Ortega y Gasset, to live is to find oneself in the world, to be involved and imprisoned by the things that constitute our circumstances. But life is not only to be among things as one of them, but to know oneself living, to be aware of what one does.

Life is not any foreign or pre-existing substance to the subject that lives.

Life is pure activity, and it has to constantly make itself in time, in space. Life is choice.ç

The challenges of the 4 life stages

What are the challenges we face at each of the stages of our lives? We review the existential crises and the way we have to stand up to each moment.

1. Childhood

In order for the child to enjoy adequate growth and be able to enter the social world, It is important that you not only have a loving, warm and caring environment, but that it can provideGive him appropriate limits and the right environment so that he can feel safe.

Sharing as much time as possible with our children, avoiding as much as possible “cyber babysitters” (television, consoles, tablets, mobiles…), will help them to develop in later stages.

2. Adolescence and youth

According to various world-wide studies, happy adolescents, upon reaching adulthood, enjoy better physical and mental health.

Unicef ​​points out that 70% of mental disorders begin before the age of 24.

Therefore, it is necessary to provide adolescents with tools so that you can relate autonomously with the outside world, respecting your need for privacy and helping you to foster healthy bonds with friends.

Given the omnipresence of technology, increasingly overwhelming in everyone’s life and more in the lives of young people, today more than ever it is important to reinforce outdoor activities, stimulate reading and thinking and continue sharing spaces of relationship with our adolescents.

3. Maturity

Perhaps this is the most stable period of the human being. The sense of “self” spreads, the person becomes an active part of society and work shapes individual life.

Faced with the pressures of an increasingly hasty life, it is essential to try to compose the puzzle of our demands and desires with a minimum of balance. To achieve this, it is very important Enjoy spaces and time for yourself.

4. Senescence

It is the last stage in people’s lives. At this point, It is important to adequately face retirement and take advantage of the opportunity to carry out those activities or tasks that we have been putting off due to lack of time. It is not the age itself that is most important, but how we live it.

To consider:

the personal crisis rushes us into an accelerated phase of our existence and it presents itself at the same time as the opportunity to solve itThey put us at the center of our beingthey force us to look at ourselves, to live in our time, to narrate our personal story. The key to a healthy adaptation consists in find our own abilities to get out of difficulties